Ebola kills 31 people in DR Congo

An outbreak of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 31 people and the epidemic remains contained in a remote northwestern region, the UN health agency says.

'There are now 31 deaths,' Eugene Kambambi, the World Health Organisation (WHO)'s head of communication in DR Congo, said on Tuesday, citing Congolese authorities and stressing that the epidemic 'remains contained' in an area around 800 kilometres north of the capital Kinshasa.

Health officials had previously given a death toll of 13 people from the lethal haemorrhagic fever since August 11 around the isolated town of Boende, surrounded by dense tropical forest in Equateur province.

Kabambi was speaking by telephone from Mbandaka, the provincial capital, where he was accompanied by Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi and the WHO representative in DRC, Joseph Cabore. The three were due to travel later Tuesday to the Boende area, which has already been quarantined.

Kabamba added that there were '53 confirmed, suspected or likely cases' of Ebola, while 185 people were under medical watch because they had admitted to contact with patients or were believed to have had dealings with people stricken by the highly contagious disease.

The government announced on August 25 that the DRC was facing its seventh Ebola outbreak since the disease was first identified in the former Zaire in 1976.

The health minister has ruled out any link with a serious Ebola epidemic sweeping parts of west Africa, at a cost of more than 1,500 lives, on the grounds that there had been no contact between those distant nations and Boende. The WHO has taken the same position.

Health authorities state that the outbreak is confined to four medical zones around Boende, where some personnel from the WHO and the charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) have been working with specialised epidemiologists since mid-August.

MSF on Monday told AFP that reinforcements had reached the affected area and were setting up an Ebola clinic. The deep forest location makes it hard for health teams to get to Boende, along with medical supplies to treat symptoms of the disease.

On the basis of WHO figures, Ebola kills a global average of 61 per cent of those infected, causing unstoppable bleeding and the collapse of internal organs in its final stages.

While there is no vaccine, patients can be helped through the early phases of infection, marked by severe headaches, muscle pains and dehydration because of vomiting and diarrhoea.

- See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2014/09/02/ebola-kills-31-people-in-dr-congo.html#sthash.UGhKm0f9.dpuf

The seventh outbreak in nearly 40 years of the same Ebola Zaire strain, and at the same time as this large outbreak happening.  What are the odds.... 

Not sure how they can be connected, but it seems reasonable they are in some way.  Somebody from the Congo probably brought it to Guinea, or maybe the reverse.   

Virological analysis: no link between Ebola outbreaks in west Africa and Democratic Republic of Congo

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/ebola/2-september-2014/en/

Results from virus characterization, together with findings from the epidemiological investigation, are definitive: the outbreak in DRC is a distinct and independent event, with no relationship to the outbreak in west Africa."

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Still no word on the cause of the supposed "hemorrhagic gastroenteritis" outbreak in the Congo?